With yesterday's addition of forward Elijah Gray, the Badger basketball roster is now set. There's still plenty of time to figure things out before October, but how all new the transfers and freshman mesh together will be something to watch over the rest of the summer. So with all the new additions this offseason, what could the new lineup look line for 2025?
Starters
Guard: Nick Boyd
Guard: John Blackwell
Wing: Andrew Rohde
Forward: Nolan Winter
Forward: Austin Rapp
Despite losing three starters, Greg Gard has done a nice job in the portal and has put together a starting lineup that could be even better than last year's team. Most everyone agrees on the projected starters, who have at least two potential All-Big Ten players in Blackwell and Winter, and three very solid new transfers. The team failed to address the need for a true rim-protector, but all five starters can shoot from deep, and that alone will cause headaches for opposing teams.
Bench
Guard: Jack Janicki
Guard: Zach Kinziger
Wing: Hayden Jones
Forward: Elijah Gray
Forward: Riccardo Greppi
After the starting five, things start to get a little murky. Other than Janicki, who is an obvious candidate for the sixth man, no one really stands out as a definite lock. Jones, Kinziger, and Will Garlock and Aleksas Bieliauskas are all freshman who enter with a lot of questions surrounding them, especially after last year's Daniel Freitag disaster. Kinziger, the Badgers' highest rated recruit this year, is probably the freshman that earns some good playing time just because of his pure scoring ability, something most of the bench players lack. Temple transfer Elijah Gray also is likely to see the court just based on his three years of experience at the college level.
Players like transfer Braden Carrington or sophomore Jack Robison, while good defenders and solid players, just have too many overlapping skills to really break through into the rotation. This 2025 squad certainly doesn't feel as deep as last year's team, but maybe a lot of wildcards like
Bieliauskas or Jones can show that's not case. Still, while there are ten new players to the roster this year, the expectation is a deep tournament run in March and, on paper, it looks very possible.